On a recent rainy Wednesday, visitors lined the wall of an auditorium near downtown Denver, waiting to be served plates of rice, beans and tacos. Spanish guitar music floated through the air.
Hundreds gathered at the two-story auditorium on Metropolitan State University’s campus to celebrate the 384 Latino students who are part of Metro State’s graduating class of 2015. For 18 years, the university has hosted a cultural ceremony for Latino students, who receive special stoles they’ll wear at their official graduation, on May 16.
About 1,995 students will receive their diplomas this year, up from about 1,955 last year.
The difference of 40, said Luis Torres, MSU’s deputy provost, is made up entirely of Latino students, including 14 who are undocumented.
“This year, Latino graduates equal 19.2 percent of the total graduating body, which is excellent,” Torres said. “That’s a very good percentage compared to what the Latino student body would have been five or six years ago.”
About six years ago, MSU’s president and its board of trustees embarked on a campaign to recruit more Latino students.
The goal was to become a Hispanic-Serving Institution, a federal government designation allotted to any entity, whether a college or a government department, whose total student population or employee base is comprised of at least 25 percent Hispanics. The designation opens the entity to any number of federal grants.
“To serve under-represented populations, that’s been the core of this institution,” said Tim Carroll, an MSU spokesman. “By getting HSI, that opens the institution to opportunities for more federal money to help that population.”
In 2008, MSU’s overall Latino student population was about 13 percent. Now it’s 20 percent.
Metro State has also actively recruited undocumented students. In 2012, the school decided to offer undocumented students discounted tuition (somewhere between in-state and out-of-state, Torres says).
Once MSU hits its target, which Torres, who also serves as the co-chairman of MSU’s Hispanic-Serving Institution initiative, estimates will take another two years, it will qualify for hundreds of thousands in federal funding.
Metro State’s recruitment efforts have included partnering with area high schools with a high percentage of Latino students and offering college-readiness classes for students and their parents. The partnership is called the Excel Program.
“Many of our Latino students are first-generation,” said Cynthia Nunez Armendariz, who heads Excel. “So being able to take the extra time to educate them on the college-going process … that has been something that has been important to us.”
MSU has also hired more bilingual staff and educated its existing staff on cultural sensitivities of first-generation or non-native students.
Once the students enroll, they’re partnered with other Latino and first-generation students, or students whose parents didn’t attend college. Those bonds are crucial — they increase retention and graduation rates.
But they don’t necessarily all take the same path toward graduation.
Torres signed all the certificates given to the Latino students at the cultural celebration.
“It really struck me,” he said, “that the first 20 or so I signed, I noticed there wasn’t a single major repeated.”
He added: “It’s important because that means that these students are going to be contributing to our society in a variety of ways.”
